Students need a strong foundation in reading, writing, math, and numeracy to be successful in GED preparation, in work readiness programs, and in post-secondary education and training. The resources in the Basic Skills Collection that will assist in providing this foundation include research articles, materials and curriculum based on research,…

The purpose of this practice brief is to provide schools, districts, and states with background knowledge about best practices for older students who struggle to read. It focuses on the reading skills that adolescents need to more fully access content-area curricula and, in turn, secure a productive future. The authors define adolescent reading as…

The Louisiana Striving Readers evaluation assessed the implementation and effectiveness of the Voyager "Passport Reading Journeys" (PRJ), a widely used supplemental literacy intervention for struggling adolescent readers that reflects the research-based practices recommended by the National Reading Panel (2000) and other more recent…

Discusses word attack and comprehension skills and provides a list of word analogies. (RB)

Describes a model that distinguishes seven types of meaning that can function in reading: discoursal, lexical, morphological, propositional, syntactic, rhetorical, and functional. (MKM)

One hundred forty-three seventh-grade students were assessed in the areas of word attack and comprehension. This study focused on the 71 students with the lowest total word-attack scores. Results indicated that all comprehension subskills had strong relationships to overall comprehension, but that many word-attack subskills had only low,…

This paper discusses the importance of an emphasis on word meaning skills as part of an objective-based approach to the development of reading comprehension at intermediate grade levels. To aid in determining the meaning of an unfamiliar word, two strands of word meaning skills are proposed. One strand concentrates on the use of word parts, while…

Reviews "The Nature of Vocabulary Acquisition" by Margaret G. McKeown and Mary E. Curtis. Focuses on three questions involving vocabulary acquisition: (1) What does it mean to know the meaning of a word?; (2) How does knowledge about word meanings develop?; and (3) What is the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and comprehension? (MM)

Describes the development of syllable recognition software and its implications for teaching word attack skills. (AEA)

Training tasks that comprise the word attack component of phonics reading programs are discussed. Tasks that reflect phonics subskills are drawn from the literature, and variables that appear crucial in distinguishing these tasks are discussed. The analysis is viewed as necessary to generating research questions in a program attempting to assess…

Reviews numerous meaning-based vocabulary methods that use comparing, contrasting, making analogies, or developing examples of concepts and relates them to the adult basic education setting. (JOW)

This guide to teaching reading skills in the science classroom incorporates methods primarily associated with teaching reading as an isolated subject. Recommendations include determining the students' reading instructional level, matching text materials to that level, developing vocabulary through context clues and Latin and Greek roots, and…

Investigates the effectiveness of the Vocabulary Overview Guide in improving vocabulary comprehension and retention. Concludes that, compared to traditional methods of listing words and studying definitions, the guide increases vocabulary comprehension, retention, and metacognitive awareness. (MM)

Paper prepared under contract with the Defense Language Institute, English Language Branch, Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and presented to the staff and faculty of the Institute in 1972. (RS)